On our first day in Big Bend during a recent trip (April, 2015), my brother,
Randy, and I decided to drive down the Maxwell Scenic Highway to check out the
recent flooding along the Rio Grande we had heard about. But first, since I had
never been to Cattail Falls, we turned off to enjoy this pleasant hike.
However, I was haunted somewhat on the way there by the story of an unfortunate
death at the falls, recorded in the book Death in Big Bend by Laurence
Parent. Descending one of the drop-offs in Cattail Canyon by rope, a climber got
stuck, hung up on his rope. His partner made a heroic effort to get to the
Basin for help, but it was too late. The climber apparently died of
exposure. What a gruesome story for a geologic feature with such a beautiful
garden spot at the bottom!

The path to the falls winds through
alluvial deposits of
Quaternary age. These
deposits were laid down during the last million years or so, up to an age of
just a few thousand years, but the exact age of such deposits is difficult to
determine. This isn't true for the occasional outcrops of the Chisos Formation
that appear along the hike. Many of these rocks can be dated
radiometrically
such that it is known they range in age from 47 to 33 million years. This
formation
contains a variety of
volcanic
and sedimentary
rock. Most of the rocks of the Chisos Formation form slopes and not prominent
outcrops of ledges or cliffs.

The next picture is a small outcrop of the Chisos Formation, too small to be
on the new USGS map of the park (Scientific Investigations Map 3142,
2011), but it may be a small part of the "sandstone,
tuff, and
rhyolite unit" (symbolized
as Tcstr on the map), since this unit is mapped in other locations in this
general area. Tuff is lithified ("turned into stone") volcanic ash, and rhyolite
is a volcanic rock very rich in
silica

.

Below is a view back to the west toward Burro Mesa, the dark, hilly area on
the other side of the plain. The rocks of the mesa include the 33 million year
old Tule Mountain
Trachyandesite
member of the Chisos Formation and the 29 million year old Wasp Spring member
of the Burro Mesa Formation. Trachyandesite is a volcanic rock of intermediate
silica content but, unlike its otherwise close chemical "kin"
andesite, contains little
or no quartz, as the silica that would go to quartz is used up forming
feldspar
The Wasp Spring member records a violent eruption or eruptions of tuff,
ash-flow tuff, rock fragments and blocks, and volcanic bombs: lava thrown into
the air and cooled into rock during its flight. The multi-colored terrain in
the foreground probably reflects surface debris of the underlying Chisos
Formation.

The final photo involving the Chisos Formation, below, looking in a northerly
direction, apparently shows the so-called "Younger part" of the Chisos
formation, in this case what appears to be volcanic ash. Below that, the USGS
map indicates the presence of the Ash Spring
basalt member of the Chisos.
Basalt is a relatively silica poor and iron rich volcanic rock, which gives it
its dark color. This unit is dated with an age of 41 million years.

In the next picture my brother, the birder, is checking out a feathery guy
on the other side of this impressive wash carved out by flash-flood water
surging out of the falls. The picture after that is looking away from the falls
down the wash. The wash cuts right through
pediment and alluvium that
was deposited previously, as indicated by the steep, uniform, almost man-made
looking banks of the wash. This could mean the falls is a geologically recent
phenomenon, since the wash obviously is. However, another possibility is that
the form of the wash is due to only one or two rare events - say, a once in
ten-thousand-year flood. Or yet another possibility is that the channel dates
back to the last glacial age when rainfall was heavier. I would bet on this
last possibility if I had to put money down.

The falls are the last drop for water flowing down Cattail Canyon. Below is
a photo taken while approaching the falls. The cliffs consist of the
intrusive igneous rocks of
Ward Mountain on the west side of the Basin. These rocks are high in silica and
alkaline, meaning
they are high in alkali metals like sodium and potassium. The radiometric age
of the rocks at the falls has not been measured to my knowledge, but the
pamphlet accompanying the USGS map records an age of 32 million years for a
sample of this intrusive rock taken near the Window.

The base of the falls is truly a garden spot in the desert. The following
pictures are,
(1) looking toward the falls up the stream that flows from there, (2) a
closer shot of the falls, and (3) a close-up of the yellow columbines that grow
at the base of the falls. You may have noticed in the pictures of the wash that
there did not seem to be any water flowing there. That's because the water
flowing in the stream pictured below gradually disappears underground, out of
sight. It may flow all the way to the Rio Grande; maybe some of it reappears
in a spring down the drainage; or it gradually evaporates and the vapor rises
and exits through the bed of the creek. Of course, during a flash flood, the
water may make it to Cottonwood Creek on the east side of Burro Mesa and thence
to Terlingua Creek, which empties into the Rio Grande at the mouth of
Santa Elena Canyon. The headwaters of Cattail Canyon are on the west side of
Emory Peak, the highest peak in the Chisos.

There are also some rare orchids that grow here. I wanted to get a picture of
them, but you really have to be careful not to step on any of the fragile
vegetation - especially the orchids. Unfortunately - NO, I did NOT step
on an orchid! - my photo didn't come out for some reason. So, no orchid
pictures, sorry! I just took one photo, because I was anxious to get away from
any possible misstep. I even got to wondering if I was being irresponsible.

Here is a photo only a geologist could love. Erosive forces loosen rocks on
the cliffs above the base of Cattail Falls, and they end up as rock-fall blocks.
This particular block has served to preserve the material upon which it fell,
the older landslide, alluvial,
colluvial deposits of
Quaternary age that generally have been eroded away at the base of the falls.
Colluvium is the term for material that has been transported downhill by a
variety of processes involving water and/or gravity.

On the way out the sun angle was great to take the following photo of one of
the many rhyolitic
dikes you can see
protruding above the ground around the Chisos Mountains. A dike is the result of
a sheet-like intrusion of magma that cuts across whatever geologic structure
that was there previously. (As a result it is called a non-concordant
intrusion.) There are two other dikes in the picture. All three are parallel and
strike north
northwest to south southeast. If such an intrusion reaches the surface, it
produces a
fissure eruption. You
have probably seen videos of the spectacular fissure eruptions of Kilauea in
Hawaii. However, those spew basaltic magma. The magma that solidified into the
rock of these dikes was a much more viscous silicic (high in silica) magma. When
such a magma reaches the surface and has a high volatile content (gases, mostly
water vapor, dissolved in the magma), a violent eruption may take place, not the
"fountains" of lava you see in the Kilauea videos.